Freedom
by Jusmine
Summary: But at what cost, dear madam?
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hello there, Alex Rider fandom! It has been a long time, I must say. This story has been in the works for a very long time. A very, very long time. And it is not yet finished (be warned, dear readers) I am hoping that reviews will encourage me to finally finish it, yes? A few more words of warning: This story will have **heterosexual content.** If this is not your cup of tea, please frantically bash your return button three, two, one, now. Thank you. It will eventually be Jack/Ben. Also, it does not observe the canon of either Crocodile Tears, or Scorpia Rising.

Now for the biggest warning: This first chapter contains major character death, and the rest will be dealing with heavy grief. Now, with all of that out of the way, I suppose I should warn for language and violence and then tell you to enjoy if you can! :D

* * *

The silence at the little table was almost unbearable. The only sound was the occasional scrape of a fork against a plate.

Alex stared down at his plate. Macaroni and cheese. This was the third night in a row that they'd eaten this same meal. It used to be that Jack would never even eat leftovers or even just serve the same kind of food twice in one day. She'd always brush it off with a grin and say, "Variety is the spice of life!" in a sparkly, chipper voice whenever Alex or Ian had kidded her about her little pet peeve.

But that was a long time ago now. She'd been growing more quiet, slowly losing the energy and spirit that had made her so… Jack.

Looking up at her now, Alex could see nothing of the vibrant, beautiful woman that he knew. Two years ago, before everything with MI6 had started. Now her curly red hair was always lank and greasy, she never wore any of the makeup that she had always adored, and she was skinny to the point of emaciation now, where she had once been curvy.

Alex slowly looked down at his plate again, instead of watching his best friend listlessly shoving her food around on her plate.

Alex felt guilty every time he saw her like this. It was his fault. It was all his fault, because everything he'd come home from his missions, she'd seemed to have aged years.

Two months ago, a few weeks after he'd gotten back from a mission in Russia, he'd gone to the cinema with Tom after school without telling Jack about his plans. When he'd gotten home hours after school, hours after he usually got home, Alex had found Jack sitting next to the phone. She'd been sitting in her favorite chair with her knees drawn up to her chin. She hadn't moved except to draw in deep, shuddering breaths. She had, Alex remembered, looked impossibly old and so, so tired.

She'd jumped up out of her chair when she saw Alex standing in the doorway. She'd thrown herself at him, and spent the next hour sobbing into Alex's shoulder as he apologized over and over again.

Alex was called back to the present by the almost harsh ring of the telephone. He looked up quickly at the sharp clatter of Jack's fork as it fell from her limp grasp. Jack looked positively terrified, staring at the phone with wide eyes, like it was going to jump off of its table and attack.

Alex slowly stood up and walked over to the phone. He picked it up on the fourth ring. "Hullo?"

After listening for a few moments, Alex said, "I'm not interested," and set the phone down sharply.

He turned back to the table and Jack.

Jack was motionless, staring at him with wide, petrified eye. She was incredibly pale, even more so than her now-usual pallor.

It took Alex only a few moments to figure out why she looked so goddamned scared now. She flinched every time the phone rang, now, expecting the person on the other end to call Alex away to his injuries or maybe even his death this time.

And Alex had said _"I'm not interested."_ How many times had he said that to MI6?

"It was just a telemarketer," Alex said softly, reassuringly.

Jack relaxed a little. A very little only. She never relaxed fully anymore, living under the weight of waiting for Alex to be called away on a mission, on what could be his final mission.

Alex waited, hoping she'd say something, but she just nodded mutely and began to methodically collect the dinner dishes.

Alex stared sadly after her as she carried the dishes through to the kitchen. It had been three days since she'd spoken a word to him. And, seeing how antisocial she'd become, leaving all past boyfriends and girlfriends behind her, it was unlikely that she'd spoken to anyone else either.

(Three days and counting.)

* * *

Alex walked through the door the next afternoon with two grocery bags in each hand. He always did the shopping now. Jack hadn't left the house at all in over a month. He found Jack in the kitchen, making macaroni again.

"I brought groceries, Jack," he said in the same soft tone that he always used with her now.

She didn't even acknowledge his presence. She just continued stirring the noodles like she hadn't even heard him.

Alex put the groceries away, then went into the living room to do his homework.

Dinner that night followed nearly the same pattern as that of the night before. Really, the only difference was that tonight the telephone call wasn't someone selling vacuums; this time, it really was MI6.

Alex hung up the phone slowly. Turning around, he spoke to Jack in a low, soothing tone that had felt ridiculous and contrived in the beginning, but was now horrible reality. "I have to leave now. There's enough food in the cupboard for longer than I'll be gone. I won't be gone long…" Alex paused. Jack hadn't acknowledged anything that he'd just said. "Jack?" he tried again. "Jack, listen to me, alright? I have to go away for a little while - "

"Don't go," Jack cut him off, her voice creaking from disuse, and her eyes welling up with tears.

Alex stared at her. "I have to go," he said softly, his own voice cracking slightly.

"No you don't," Jack said, shaking her head. The movement caused her eyes to overflow, and the tears leaked out, drawing designs on her face.

"I have to. I - I can't lose you," he whispered. They always did this. Every time MI6 called, they had this same fucking conversation. Usually it ended there, after Alex brought out this card, the ace he kept hidden up his sleeve. But not tonight. Tonight, not even the truth worked on Jack.

"Oh, and you think I can lose you?" Jack demanded angrily, swiping away her tears.

Alex closed his eyes, breathing deeply in an attempt to not start crying himself. "What else can I do?" he asked. "I'm not seeing any other choices here."

"Don't you want to be free?" Jack pleaded. "Don't you want _freedom_, Alex?"

Alex swallowed. Freedom was an impossible dream. "Until you can come up with a better plan, I'll keep doing what I have to," he said harshly.

He turned and walked away. Jack caught up to him in the hallway as he was putting on his jacket.

"We could run away," she said, her eyes bright (for the first time in so long) and naïve.

Alex snorted bitterly. "That's not going to do a damn thing, Jack," he said, turning to face her. "They'll just find us. There's no such thing as freedom."

He turned again to leave, but she grabbed his arm to stop him. "It's worth a shot," she said softly.

"No, it's not!" Alex said angrily. "D'you know what'll happen? They'll find us before we make it to the end of the street. And they'll kill you, Jack. They'll _kill_ you."

Jack was pale, but her jaw was set. "That's better than sitting around here waiting for some fucking agent to tell me that you're dead."

Alex closed his eyes briefly. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

She didn't reply, just stood there and watched Alex open the door.

She didn't speak until Alex was practically closing the door behind himself.

"You're just going to leave me?" Her voice was soft, resigned. And that was what made Alex turn around to face her again.

"Jack…" he tried. "We've already done this today. We've already done this so many times. I can't - "

"You can't what?" Jack cut him off. "You can't lose me? Well let me tell you right now, Alex Rider, that is the most hypocritical thing I have ever heard!"

"I'm going." He looked down at the floor; he couldn't bring himself to look at her face.

He turned and went out the door without another word.

* * *

Two weeks later, he returned.

Jack didn't greet him at the door. When he called out to find her, all the response he got was the sound of the refrigerator slamming shut.

"I'm back, Jack," he said quietly as he walked into the kitchen. It was an old joke, one that he'd found hysterical a few years' previous, when Jack had finally let him watch _The Shining._ He'd said it every day when he returned from school for months.

She didn't laugh. She didn't react in any way.

He stood silently for a brief moment, watching her stiff posture as she brutally chopped up a carrot, before he made up his mind.

"Pack some clothes. It's time to go."

Jack turned and looked at him. She smiled for the first time in a long, long time and rushed off to pack.

Alex very sensibly turned off the stove. Just because they were never coming back, it didn't mean they had to burn down the neighborhood.

* * *

Alex efficiently collected clothes and threw them into his backpack. He strapped the 9mm handgun that MI6 knew nothing about into its shoulder holster. Then he went downstairs and threw food into his bag as well. Cereal, canned food, power bars; anything that would last. The food was quickly followed by bottles of water and Gatorade. Who knew where they would end up, and what they would need? He'd learned the hard way to always be prepared.

"Hurry up!" he called up the stairs to Jack as soon as he finished packing. He wanted to get out before he could change his mind, and before MI6 even thought of calling on him again.

Jack hurried down the stairs a moment later, hastily stuffing her clothes farther down into her bag so that she could close it.

"Let's go," Alex commanded tersely, hustling her out the door into the late evening. Jack immediately veered off towards their car, but Alex grabbed her arm to stop her, dragging her in the opposite direction. He walked quickly, but not so fast that anyone would be suspicious.

"But the car's the easiest way to go!" Jack protested.

"We'll use a car," Alex told her. "But ours would be too easy for them to track." He didn't know when or how, but there was no doubt in his mind that MI6 would eventually realize he was gone. With this in mind, he felt himself slipping into his mission mind-set.

"Then what car are we - No. _No way!_" Jack said firmly as Alex stopped next to the car in a neighbors' drive. "That's not ours!"

Alex rolled his eyes. "You're running away from a powerful organization who wouldn't hesitate to send a sniper after you, and you're worried about morality."

"Of course I am!" Jack retorted. "It's wrong."

"Sometimes you have to do things that you don't like to survive, Jack," Alex said harshly. "You want to live?" he demanded.

"Not like this!" Jack argued.

"Get used to it," Alex replied shortly. He opened the door (the Petersons never locked their car) and turned his attention to the car's wires before Jack could reply and continue the argument. Arguments over right and wrong never ended, and they were running out of time.

It took a few moments, but Alex successfully started the car. "Get in," he said.

Jack moved to sit in the drivers' seat, but Alex shook his head. "I'm driving."

She opened her mouth to argue, but then decided against it and silently moved to shotgun.

* * *

They drove in silence for the next twenty minutes or so. Finally, Jack broke the silence.

"Where are we going?" she asked quietly.

"Somewhere," Alex answered.

"Vague enough?" Jack said with a strange sort of sigh-snort combination.

Alex chuckled. "We're not going anywhere in particular. Just getting as far away as possible."

"We should go home," Jack mused quietly

"Giving up this quickly?" Alex glanced over at Jack, her face illuminated by the flickering streetlights that they drove past. "We just left!"

"I mean my parents' house. In the States," Jack clarified quickly.

"No," Alex said with finality.

"Why not?" Jack asked, surprised. "They'd let us stay there."

"Don't be stupid, Jack," Alex said sharply.

She didn't reply. Alex glanced over at her again, and saw that she was glaring at him.

"Look," he sighed, softening his tone. "Do you really want to drag your family into all of this? It's too dangerous."

Both of them fell back into a rather tense silence.

After a while, Alex heard a light snore. He glanced over to find that Jack had fallen asleep in what looked to be an extremely uncomfortable position. She was sitting straight in her chair, facing forward, except for her head, which had somehow managed to fall so that the back of her head was resting on the glass.

It made Alex's own neck cringe in sympathy just looking at it.

Shaking his head, he turned his attention back to the road.

* * *

They'd been driving for a few hours now, and he really wanted some caffeine, but there were no shops out here in the country.

There were more cars out on the little country road than he had been expecting. One had been driving behind him long enough that, if he hadn't been confident that MI6 didn't know he'd left, he would have suspected that they were following him.

Well, he would have been more suspicious, at least.

There was another car driving towards them from the opposite direction right now. It was driving along at a fairly quick speed, and soon it had moved from being a vague shadow down the road to almost passing him.

Suddenly, the car approaching him turned sharply onto Alex's side of the road.

Alex swore violently, rousing Jack.

"What's going on?" she asked sleepily as Alex yanked his wheel to the left. Their car went off of the road and into the ditch with a violent shudder. Alex heard a crack, and he looked over in alarm to see that Jack's head had connected with the window.

Alex automatically reached out to check that she was still alive. He felt her pulse under his fingers, and he breathed a sigh of relief. She was alive, just unconscious.

Alex jumped out of the car to see what damage had been done to their car.

He stalked around the car to see that both the car that had run them off of the road and the car that had been following them were both stopped on the road.

Alex glared at the cars as he quickly walked over. Whoever those wankers were, they were going to pay.

"What the hell was that for?" Alex demanded of the men he saw clambering out of the two cars. "Are you trying to kill us?" Which was, he had to admit, a perfectly viable option.

"No, actually," one of the four men said. "Our orders were to keep you alive." There was the distinctive sound of a gun being cocked, perfectly completing the spy film cliché.

Alex looked more closely at the men. He recognized one of them with a sinking feeling in his gut. "Wolf." Looking more closely at the others as they approached, he saw Ben, Snake, Eagle.

"Funny place for a reunion," Alex said finally as the now-silent men fanned out in front of him, all of their weapons on display, except for Ben, who was standing directly in front of Alex with a relaxed stance that was fooling no one present.

"We were in the neighborhood," Ben shrugged with a slight smile that Alex couldn't quite bring himself to return. "Standard operating procedure."

Alex wasn't sure how to reply to that; he opted to ignore it. "Good to see you're all still alive. Especially you, Ben," he added with a nod to him. "It's been a while."

"How do you know his name?" Wolf pounced immediately, his growl familiar, but not loathed; not since Point Blanc.

"Classified," Alex smirked. Not the brightest thing to do while faced with a firing squad, perhaps, but Alex had never been accused of being a good prisoner.

"We've worked together a few times," Ben said before Wolf could do more than grimace at Alex.

"Apparently recently, too?" Alex asked, eyebrow raised. "Can't think of any other reason why you'd be here."

"MI6 sent us," Snake said, the first time Alex had heard his voice since the Beacons.

"Is this about Jack and me taking a holiday?" Alex asked, his eyes all wide and innocent. "I didn't think it would be such a big deal."

"It is when you're taking a stolen car," Eagle commented, a wry grin on his lean face.

Alex shrugged; it was a fair point. "We needed a break; figured we'd be better off if we didn't take our own."

"Alex, we have to take you in." Ben's eyes were earnest.

"Sorry, I can't," Alex replied, not sorry at all.

"Come on, Alex," Ben said, his voice almost pleading, but nothing Alex was really prepared to buy into. "We don't have a choice."

"No," Alex shook his head. "I can't do that to Jack, Ben. This whole thing is fucking her up, and I promised her we'd get away."

"What's wrong with her?" Ben asked immediately, genuine concern flitting across his face.

Alex debated for all of two seconds before he decided that it couldn't hurt to tell Ben a little. "She hasn't been talking," he said quietly. "And she hasn't left the house for months."

"Jack not talking? Seriously?"

"You haven't seen her in ages, Ben," Alex replied. "It started about a year ago. Or, I guess it started right after Ian died, but it's getting worse now."

Ben sobered. "I'm sorry," he said, and he at least sounded sincere.

Alex shrugged. "It's not your fault."

"Whose fault is it, then?" Snake asked curiously.

"Ours," Ben said darkly. Alex had told him a little of his work for MI6 a few years ago. He hadn't told him a lot, but it was enough to anger him.

"Who?" Snake asked again, frowning.

"MI6," Alex said shortly, and he might have failed to keep the resentment out of his voice.

There was a short, heavy silence as the others processed this.

"So you're not working for them by choice?" Wolf asked, and Alex could hear a bit of righteous anger in the man's deep voice. "So they make you work for them by holding your friend?" he continued when Alex shook his head.

"Jack," Alex replied softly, staring down at the ground. Ben walked forward to put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, but Alex flinched at the contact, and Ben backed off swiftly.

There was something akin to pity on Eagle's face. "Where is the lovely lady we've heard so much about, then?" he asked, apparently trying to lighten the atmosphere.

"In the car. Unconscious," Alex replied shortly as he tried to hide any and all worry. Really, she should have woken up by now, shouldn't she have?

Ben winced. "Our fault?" he guessed.

"I need to check on her," Alex said, half-turning in the direction of the car.

"Stay there, Cub!" Wolf barked immediately. "Eagle - go get the lady."

"No! Ben will get her," Alex said, looking straight at Ben. He watched as Ben nodded and walked the short distance to the car. He could hear the agent murmuring reassurances to a disoriented Jack, their voices growing louder as he helped her walk to the cluster of SAS and spy.

No one reprimanded Alex when he stepped forward to grasp Jack around the shoulders and replace Ben as her new source of support. "Are you all right?" he asked her quietly, working hard to conceal his grin when she winked at him. She felt steadier than she looked, and Alex had never been so happy for her amateur theater experience.

"What do they want?" she asked, her voice sounding choppy and unsteady, loud enough for the others to hear.

"We've been monitoring you since you left your house," Ben answered. "We have orders to bring you in."

Jack tensed, her act falling away as her eyes took on the familiar look of panic that Alex had learned to hate. The SAS tensed and raised their guns at the sudden shift.

"It'll be all right, Jack," Ben hastened to say. "They just want to keep Alex close. It's the only way to protect him."

Jack's eyes cleared, her panic turning into determination and anger. "Is that where you've been for the past year, then, Ben? Spying on Alex for them?"

"No," Ben shook his head. "I was undercover for a long time. I wasn't allowed to contact you."

"Whatever," Jack muttered, looking away.

Ben swallowed. "I'm sorry, Jack. I really am."

Jack whipped back around, glaring at the man. "If you were really sorry, then you'd let us go. They're going to get him killed, Ben," she added, softer, her eyes soft and teary.

"That is not going to happen," Wolf said decisively.

"How do you know?" Jack demanded. "You don't know what he's had to do!"

Alex smiled slightly, even though the situation was really not funny in the slightest. "He means they're not going to let us go," he pointed out quietly, before adding, in a louder tone, "I know it's hard to tell sometimes. Wolf really does speak like an old Bond villain, doesn't he?"

Wolf growled, while the others snorted delicately into their sleeves.

"We have our orders," Snake said, sobering quickly.. "I'm afraid we really don't have any choice."

"So," Alex said. "What are your orders, then?"

"To bring you back to them," Ben said, not quite meeting either Jack or Alex's gaze.

"By any means necessary," Wolf added. Alex wasn't sure if that was meant as a threat or a friendly warning that they had no choice.

"But preferably _not_ scraped, bruised, shot, or even in the throes of agony from a hangnail on little wee Cub's little wee pinkie finger," Eagle spoke up, staring pointedly at Wolf.

"I'm sorry, Alex," Ben said, and even though he knew he shouldn't, Alex believed the sincerity of the regret he heard in the other man's voice.

"It's not your fault," Alex shrugged. "Orders are orders."

There were a few moments of awkward silence, then Alex sighed and broke it.

"Look," he said, his voice calm and diplomatic. "Just let Jack go, please. Even without her as leverage, I'll work for them, all right? I'm addicted enough to the adrenalin that I couldn't just drop it all, even if I wanted to."

"We can't," Snake's voice was quiet, sad. "We can't do that, Cub."

"Why not?" Alex asked, frustrated, and louder than he'd intended, nearly yelling into the quiet, cool dawn. "Just tell them we split up before you caught me!"

Ben was already shaking his head. "That won't work. They saw Jack get in the car with you on the surveillance cameras, and we've been following you ever since.

Alex stared. He hadn't been expecting that. He hadn't even known there were fucking cameras, although he supposed he should have thought of that before. "Of course they have fucking cameras monitoring me," he muttered, angry at himself for not considering it before. It was an amateurish mistake that he knew wouldn't lead to fun and games with MI6.

So there really was no option here. He couldn't go back to MI6 with Jack being how she was. There was no way that Wolf would let him walk out of here, and he didn't want to get any of them in trouble any way. He definitely couldn't bring himself to hurt them enough to escape. They'd never exactly been kind to him (except for Ben), but they had had his back when it truly mattered.

Besides, even if he could somehow manage to overpower four highly-trained, highly-armed men with only his 9mm and his Jack Starbright as weapons, there was no telling whether or not MI6 still had eyes on him.

It was a sobering thought, but it was quite possible that he would never manage to escape MI6. Not now, not here. And nowhere else.

He was resigned to his fate, maybe, but he wasn't willing to draft Jack into the same.

Alex swallowed hard, and raised his eyes to meet Ben's steady gaze. "Will you look after her for me?" he asked, his voice steady and calm, staring down Ben even as Jack made a small outraged sound.

"Alex," Ben sighed. "MI6 won't have you killed for running away. We all do at some point or other. They're probably just throw you into some training."

"That's not what I mean," Alex snapped back. "Will you look after her when I die?"

"Shut up, Alex," Jack hissed. "Just – shut the fuck up. What the fuck are you talking about? You're not going to die. We're leaving, remember?" Her eyes were pleading, staring up at him like he was her only hope in the world. "You promised," she whispered, finally.

"I know," he said back, absurdly gently, like she was a small wounded rabbit or guinea pig. "I know I promised you, but I shouldn't have, Jack. I'm not getting out of here."

"Come on, Cub," Snake put in, surpassing vaguely uncomfortable quite spectacularly. "We're not here to kill you. Fuck."

Alex ignored them all. "Come on, Ben," he said desperately. "Promise me, okay? I need to know that… I just need to know that she's all right. _Please_."

Ben squeezed his eyes shut briefly. "C'mon, Alex. You know I will. But it won't matter, not for a long- not right now, at least," he amended.

Alex nodded, once. "Thank you," he said, more sincere than he had ever been in his life. He took a deep breath. "I love you, Jack," he turned to her. "It's not your fault. None of this is, I never blamed you for it, and you shouldn't either. Just blame the government like everyone else," he half-laughed, because she was just staring at him, her eyes wide and shiny and bordering on panicked, and he never wanted to see her looking like that ever again. He kissed her gently on the forehead, and then shoved her away as hard as he could, so that she stumbled back at least four paces.

He reached quickly and well-practiced to where the 9mm handgun was nestled in its holster and pulled it out. He glimpsed all four men tightening their grips on their own guns, and Jack's frantic stumbling pace back towards him, before he clenched his teeth and turned the barrel of the gun into his own forehead.

* * *

A/N: Yes, Alex is really dead. No, he will not be coming back. But yes, there is more of the story to come! At some point. Hopefully soon. Sooner, perhaps, if the response is positive! (I am a whore for reviews, and I freely admit this.)


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thank you all for your lovely reviews! Here is the second chapter, much quicker than I anticipated. Seems like posting really was the kick in the ass that I needed. XD

Jack felt the scream catching in her throat as she helplessly stumbled towards Alex. He was lying on the cold unforgiving ground, the red of blood and the gray of brain matter and the white of bone fragments pooling around his head.

She wanted to retch and scream and cry and pummel him until he _woke up_, until time went backwards and Alex was still standing there, snarking at Ben and whoever the fuck "Wolf" was.

She flung herself down next to Alex, grabbing for his hand, braving the mess to check his pulse even though she knew _she knew _that there was nothing there, there couldn't be anything there because his head was literally gone, and she felt like she couldn't breathe which was only fair, right, because Alex couldn't either and _fuck_. Fuck fuck fuck what was wrong, why wasn't Alex moving. Why wasn't he _saying_ anything – it's Alex; he always had something smartass to say.

She couldn't see Alex anymore, and she felt her throat screaming in pain as she did the same, and she realized that tears were pouring hotly down her face, her neck, staining her sweater.

She slammed her fists into the asphalt, needing to do something _anything_ and why wasn't he waking up? She couldn't understand it. He'd been right there and then she wasn't and then he was just… gone.

Jack felt strong arms wrapping around her waist, levering her up onto her feet and she beat her fists in to the arms, and then into the sturdy chest of her captor as whoever it was pulled her away from her Alex, and she screamed helplessly as it didn't do any good and she was cradled gently.

A gentle voice coaxed into her ears and she tried to shudder away because Alex was gone and what the fuck did it matter if they thought it was okay, because it _wasn't okay,_ okay? It wasn't fucking okay, and Alex was fucking _dead_ or at least doing a fucking awesome impression of it and Jack just didn't care anymore.

She wanted to tear herself away from the suffocating embrace, but the arms only held her tighter, and Ben's voice was still going on and on. "- not your fault, Jack. I swear it's not, it was his choice. It was because he loves you, okay? He just wanted you to be okay."

And fuck he was already talking in the past tense. Part of her wanted to laugh at herself for noticing that now and the rest of her just wanted to pull back and punch Ben in the fucking face because he had no fucking right and_ god_. Sometimes she'd wished herself dead, but never Alex.

She didn't know how long they stood there, Ben rocking her back and forth gently as she sobbed and screamed and died inside and the sky was lightening when her voice and strength finally gave in and she collapsed limply in the circle of Ben's arms.

Dimly, she became aware of movement and the noise of cars and people around them. She tried to pull back from Ben to see what was happening, but he just pulled her tighter and murmured for her not to look.

Another sob caught in her throat at the implication. Alex was still there, then, or, even worse, being moved by someone who didn't have any right to touch him.

"I'm sorry, Jack," Ben whispered into her ear. "I'm so fucking sorry."

And she shuddered, her own arms going around Ben in response, and let herself be held tightly like a damsel in distress.

Some time later, "We need to go," Snake said quietly, and Ben nodded, relaxing his grasp on Jack.

She let herself be led to Ben's car, still clinging shamelessly to him. He carefully helped her into the passenger seat.

Ben reached into the back of the car and pulled out a first aid bag. He pulled out little packets with antibacterial cloths, and gently took one of her cold hands into his own warm ones.

She looked down blankly as he rubbed the cloth on the palm of her hand. She winced at the sting, and she slowly realized that not all of the blood on her hands was Alex's. She must have cut her hands on the pavement.

She didn't remember when.

Ben took his time, carefully cleaning her each and every little cut and bandaging her hands gently. It felt strange to have anyone besides Alex take care of her like this. No one had had to care for her with Alex there every step of the way, making sure she didn't get hurt, and picking her up when it was unavoidable.

Jack was shivering again, and Ben, still concerned, still _caring_, reached over and turned on the car. He turned the heat up and pointed the vents at her.

It was nice, and she was glad there was someone there who cared, but the heat wouldn't stop the trembling. She was cold, but on the inside, and she was afraid that she would never be warm again.

Slowly, she realized that Ben was talking to her. " - Jack, listen to me, alright? We have to take you back, okay? Then, and I promise, we'll get you home to your family."

Jack gave a choked sob at the thought of her family, of the warm house that she and all of her rowdy siblings were raised in. Christmases, birthdays there, so many memories. And so far away. She'd always wanted to take Alex there, but Ian had monopolized all of Alex's vacation time, and then MI6 had monopolized his _life_, and he would never go there now. Never meet her family or join in any of the traditions, or any of the things she'd wanted him to do.

Alex's life had been so empty these past few years. Friends had abandoned him, gradually, until all he had left was her and Tom. He'd missed holidays and their traditions while he was off making sure that other people lived to see their own holiday traditions.

She must have fallen asleep then, because she woke up to Ben leaning over her, gently shaking her shoulder. She shuddered in relief at the sight out the windshield of the car. It was home, or the home that she had shared with Ian and Alex, at least. The familiar shape of the house and the garden and the drive, and fuck there was her car.

She'd had a moment earlier when she'd wondered if MI6 would just ship her back to the States immediately, adorned with tearstains and blood and scars.

Ben opened her door from the outside, and she started abruptly. She hadn't even noticed him getting out of the car. He held out his hand to her, and helped her out of the car. She pulled away abruptly, but her first stumbling step had him wrapping his arm around her and helping her into the house.

"Thanks for bringing me home," Jack said woodenly, her voice rough and overused.

"Let's get you into bed," Ben said, ignoring her thanks.

Jack turned away. "You don't have to stay."

"C'mon, Jack, what kind of arsehole do you think I am?" Ben snapped, and then sighed when she flinched. "I'm not leaving you like this, okay?" he said.

Right. Of course. He'd promised Alex. And the thought almost made her break again, that Alex had protected her until the very end when he hadn't no matter what was going through his stupid little head. The thought made her angry, and it showed in her voice. "I don't need your pity. _Fox_."

"It's not – Jesus, Jack, it's not _pity_," Ben pushed out a sigh, small and angry and sad, and Jack turned back towards him. His hand was rubbing his face, and he continued. "What if I don't you to be alone, okay? What if – what if I –"

"Okay," Jack whispered, cutting him off. She reached out for his other hand, and they went up the stairs together.

She led him into her bedroom, and left the door open as she toed her shoes off, and sat tiredly on the edge of the bed. Ben lay down on the other side of the bed a moment later, his shoes neatly in a row next to the bed.

His hand reached out to her shoulder, and she let herself be pulled into the embrace of the only other person in the world who cared for Alex Rider.

* * *

When she woke up, it took a moment to remember why her heart was broken.

Ben wasn't in the bed next to her anymore, and she didn't have enough brain power to dedicate to that right now, honestly.

She didn't want to deal with anything. She stumbled out of the bed and through the door to the bathroom. She locked it behind her.

The hot water soothed over Jack's tired body, washing the tears away.

She tried to avoid looking down. She'd been standing in the shower for five minutes, and the water was still tinged red from all of the blood that had dried on her.

She'd almost been sick when she first saw the red swirling around, down into the drain.

That was Alex, that was what he'd become, because of her. He wouldn't have had to pull that trigger if she hadn't been there. Hell, he probably wouldn't have known what a trigger fucking was!

She was too caught up in her tears and thoughts of Alex to really notice the increasingly loud and frantic knocks on the bathroom door. The shout of "Jack! Are you all right?" went unheeded, and finally only the splintering of the door brought her out of her daze.

She was sitting on the floor of the shower, her arms around her knees, shaking through sobs when Ben frantically pulled the shower curtain back. He cursed viciously under his breath, and reached in to turn the water off.

He pulled a towel off of the rack and draped it around her shoulders as he pulled her up and into a standing position. She shivered, suddenly freezing. She wondered vaguely when the water had started running cold, because she felt frozen like an ice sculpture now.

Ben's arm was warm around her, his side almost burning against hers, and she leaned into him, sighing lightly. Her eyes were frozen and sore, and she went back and forth on whether her heart was mangled beyond repair or simply pulled out of her chest and thrown away.

It felt good to be held by someone else for once, instead of just her own arms wrapped around her knees while she waited for Alex to stumble home.

* * *

She spent the day on the couch, staring emptily at the telly. It wasn't even turned on. Ben sat with her for a while, brought her food, rested a hand or her shoulder as she took a few bites.

Somehow he ended up leading her up the stairs again. She didn't say a word when he crawled into the bed after her, just let him take her hand in his own and lie in silence.

She was still awake hours later, hours after Ben's breathing had become steady and soothing and grounding. Then it changed, and there were small noises of fear and pain. Nightmares. Alex had them (had had them), Jack's life was one, and Ben had them. She bet Blunt never had a nightmare in his life, the bastard.

She reached over (not very far, Ben had curled around her in his sleep, and it was too comforting to push him away, even though she wanted to and didn't want to, and that was exactly why she should. Push him away. She should) and stroked his face, whispering his name.

There was no reaction aside from a sharp shudder and a bitten-off scream. This time she shook his shoulder, hard, and he rolled violently away, falling off of the bed. He landed with a dull thud, and scrambled to his feet before Jack could blink, his arms raised in self-defense.

She sat perfectly still, knowing from experience that Ben wasn't truly awake yet, and could injure her before he realized who she was.

Finally, after a few confused blinks around the room, Ben's tense features relaxed into recognition. Jack didn't dare move until he relaxed completely, though. He still looked vaguely confused.

"I've not fallen out of a bed in a very long time," he said finally, rubbing the back of his head ruefully.

"Sorry," Jack said, shrugging. She couldn't help smiling a little at the expression on Ben's face: one part pain, three parts embarrassment.

"So that's why you wanted me in your bed," Ben said jokingly. "Just wanted to shove me out, did you?"

Jack grinned. "Why else?" she replied in the same tone. "Are you coming back to bed?" she prompted when Ben didn't seem inclined to do anything more than stand there and smile at her.

His smile faded and he shook his head, collecting his shoes and walking to the door.

"What, am I that repulsive?" Jack asked, trying to keep at least some of the joking tone in her voice. She had used to be attractive, she knew (she'd had enough people hit on her to be sure of that) but they hadn't known anything about her.

She wouldn't blame Ben if he _did_ find her repulsive. After all, everything that had happened to Alex had happened because of her. She'd known she was the leverage, even when Alex tried to keep it hidden from her, and she'd never even attempted to do anything. She didn't know what she could have done, but she was horrified at herself that she'd never even tried.

She sat nervously as Ben flicked an appraising look over her. "Not hardly," he said softly, a few moments later.

The door clicked softly behind him. Jack wrapped her arms around herself. She'd hoped that the reassurance would help, but it only served to leave her confused.

Ben was… confusing. He was always confusing. Hot and cold, _come here, Jack, let me make you dinner, no, sorry, I have to disappear for a year and not tell you!_ confusing. She'd already had her heart broken by him once, and now even though she didn't even have a heart left she couldn't risk it. Besides which, he was MI6.

Alex's life had been completely and utterly destroyed by MI6, to the point where the only person he could trust was the one that was responsible for everything. If she'd only stepped up to the plate and _done something_, then maybe not only would he still be alive, but he'd also have friends, maybe even a _life_.

Alex had changed drastically, turning from a small, blond bundle of energy with his hand always, _always_ in the cookie jar - and Jack had to laugh through her tears remembering the time she'd hidden the cookies and Alex had gone into sugar withdrawal - to a grim-faced sixteen year old man.

He'd been scarred physically, mentally, emotionally, in ways that Jack couldn't even begin to imagine.

Ben had changed, too, in the year or so since she'd last seen him. He used to have a sort of air about him, like he was always laughing. He wasn't, of course, he was MI6 after all, but he'd always seemed like he would be your best friend, whether you let him or not.

He'd certainly been a friend to Alex, helping him in ways that Jack couldn't. Ben would talk to Alex on the phone, for hours sometimes, after missions, when Alex didn't want Jack to know what he'd been through, but needed someone to talk to all the same.

Then Ben had had to go away undercover, and Alex's psyche had deteriorated further. Each time MI6 called him away, he came home quieter, with dark circles under his eyes and a painful pale pallor to his skin.

It was Jack's fault, as much as it was MI6's. After Ben left, Alex grew steadily worse, but that wasn't Ben's fault - MI6 had him as tightly in their grasp as they did Alex.

Jack hadn't been forced to let Alex down, it was her own fault. Not only had she gotten Alex tangled up with them in the first place, she had let him down when it really counted, and he'd had to take care of her when it should have been the other way round.

* * *

He didn't come back to bed that night. Jack knew that for sure because she didn't even drift off the rest of the night. Dawn found her stumbling down the stairs blindly, not even sure what the point of getting out of bed was, but craving coffee nonetheless.

The kitchen light was on, Ben's back slumped over the table, coffee mug in hand, and a photo album spread open on the surface of the table. Jack's feet moved her closer to the table and the photos. She knew they must be of Alex and she didn't want to look, she couldn't, but god, she was anyway.

It was an old album, from when Jack had just arrived. Alex was young and blond and round-cheeked, eating a fudge popsicle in one, running through a sprinkler in the back yard in another.

The air stuck like cement in her throat and she choked through a sob. She didn't know how long she stood there staring before Ben's words finally broke through the haze in her mind.

"It's all right, it's all right," over and over, the mantra slowly pushing through the roaring in her ears, the light, echoing feeling in her head. She gasped in air suddenly, her vision becoming clearer, and it was like coming back to life. She collapsed to the ground, her arms around her own stomach, and gasping somewhere between breathing and sobbing.

Ben was there again, kneeling before her, holding her hand, stroking her hair, still talking to her slowly, quietly, gently, like he was talking to a wounded animal.

"Hey," he whispered quietly when she tried to pull away. "It's okay - I've got you." And Jack leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"I miss him," she choked out, her voice muffled by Ben's shirt. She did miss him, so goddamn much, and that, combined with her guilt threatened to swamp her completely.

"I know," Ben soothed, resting his chin on the top of her head. The "I miss him too," was softer, and Jack almost didn't hear it. Her arms wrapped around Ben's waist without her thinking, a reaction to the loneliness and grief she heard etched into his voice. Ben might be better at hiding his emotions, but he still _felt_ them. She'd always admired him and Alex for maintaining their ability to feel. None of the other agents she'd met, Ian included, had seemed truly capable of emotion.

Despite everything Ben had seen and done, he still mourned the quiet teenager that he'd been friends with years before.

"Look how happy he was," she finally choked out, reaching up and pulling the album off the table and down to the floor with them. "He used to be like that all the time."

"I wish I'd known him them," Ben whispered back, his hand rubbing gentle circles over her shuddering back, warm and comforting and confusing and _god_.

"If I – if I'd done something… he could still be like that." The words felt like they were being dragged from her throat, but she couldn't stop. "I could have stopped it. I - "

"There was nothing you could have done. MI6..." Ben sighed. "They would have gotten to Alex somehow. He had a special skillset, his uncle trained him all his life. I don't know why, but he did. All the sports, all those languages - they would have gone through you to get to him, no question."

"You don't understand," Jack hiccupped. "Alex only worked for them because they threatened to take away my visa. If I'd gone home, they wouldn't have had any leverage."

"It doesn't work like that, Jack," Ben replied quietly. "They would have found a way to get to him regardless. But this way, he had you to take care of him."

"Yeah, and I did fantastic job with that, didn't I?" Jack screamed at him, suddenly, wrenching her hands from his and standing up. She walked away, stared out the window, refusing to look at him, even as she heard him stand and join her.

He didn't understand! It was her fault, all her fault. And even if he was right, and they would have gotten him anyway, she'd still let him down. All those times that he'd needed her there to hold him when he woke screaming or to bandage his cuts, she'd just stayed in her bed and pretended to not hear the cries, or turned away.

"I never even pretended to be strong for him," she whispered, still staring resolutely out the window into a typically rainy English afternoon. "Isn't that what mothers are supposed to do?"

"You weren't his mother," Ben said, just as quietly.

Now she did turn towards him. "I was the closest thing he had to one," she said bitterly. "When he was home, all I could do was make macaroni and cheese, and cry. I couldn't help him, not with all of his make-up work for school, or with his injuries… I couldn't even make myself help him when he was crying at night, from all the nightmares. I let him down. I _killed_ him."

"You didn't, Jack," his voice was passionate, reassuring, and god she wished she could believe him. "You really didn't, I swear. He loved you, he did everything he could to protect you."

She wanted to cry, _needed_ to cry, but the tears wouldn't come out, and were instead clumping in her throat, trying to choke her. "I know," she whispered finally. "And that killed him."


End file.
